Mt. Sinai."Moses Mountain" as it's know locally.it's about a 3 hour drive from Sharm El Sheikh and virtually all climbers do it to see the sunrise. So you leave at night. Around 8:00 PM the evening of 25 January we set out, driver, guide and the two climbers: Barbara, our newest Egypt sales consultant, and me. We dozed wherever possible on the trip following decent roads and through the blackest night. There was a tiny crescent moon and a million stars.
Climbing the 2285m peak is an achievable goal for most able bodied adults. Few people are forced to turn back, it just takes some a little bit longer than others.
Most people complete the trek in about three hours; two hours on a relatively easy camel track, and one hour on a more challenging set of uneven stone steps.Even stopping regularly it's unlikely to take the walker any longer than 3.5 hours to complete the trek, which means that there's plenty of time to make use of the many mud hut-cum cafes which line the route.
If you do find yourself running out of steam half way up, there are plenty of Bedouin waiting around with camels. For the right price they're only too happy to give you a ride to the top on their "air-conditioned taxi."
Be warned though, the camels can ride only as far as the start of the stone steps, after which point you will have to cimb the final hour or so to the top.
The Monastery of the Transfiguration is also called St. Catherine's Monastery after the early Christian martyr, St. Catherine. Born as Dorothea of Alexandria in 294 AD, she was later tortured and beheaded by the Roman emperor Maximus for incessantly criticizing him for his worship of pagan idols (which was merely an age-old veneration of earth-spirit deities). Legend says Catherine's body miraculously vanished and was transported by a band of angels to the top of Jebel Katerina, the highest peak in the Sinai Peninsula. Three centuries later, monks found her supposedly uncorrupt body and brought it down to the Monastery of the Transfiguration, where some of her relics and certainly her name remain to this day.
After the Empress Helena, the next famous pilgrim to the Jebel Musa and the monastery was the Prophet Mohammed. Being well treated by the Orthodox Christian monks, Mohammed gave his personal pledge of protection, which then became incumbent on all Muslims thereby ensuring the monasteries continued existence. through the 14th centuries many thousands of pilgrims came annually and that the journey from Cairo took eight days by foot and camel. Following the Reformation, the popularity of Christian pilgrimage drastically declined and until the mid 1900's no more than 80-100 pilgrims made the arduous journey each year.
In the 1950's the Egyptian government paved roads leading to oil fields and mines along the western Sinai coast and also developed a dirt track to the foot of Jebel Musa and the monastery, which allowed increasing numbers of secular tourists to travel in taxis from Cairo. The Israeli occupation of the Sinai in 1967, the return of the region to Egypt in 1980, and the completion of a paved road further increased the number of visitors to Jebel Musa. Bus service to and from Cairo became available on a daily basis in 1986 and today it is not uncommon for a hundred or more pilgrims and tourists to visit the ancient sacred site in a single day. Currently Greek Orthodox monks tend the monastery and its extraordinary collection of Byzantine art.
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